June 29, 2015

Greece; Deathplace of Democracy

The word Referendum comes from the Latin referre (to bring back) and demos is Greek for the people as a political unit; demos is the root of the word Democracy; so a referendum brings a decision back to the people. As representative democracies European States hold elections to choose their governments giving elected representatives a mandate to represent their political choices. The Greek people chose Syriza to represent them in the broken institutions of a European Union in crisis; the Greeks chose to end Austerity. If representatives can't make a political decision, because it is contrary to their mandate, the decision can be brought back to the demos in a referendum; or at least that is how things used to work.

January 20, 2015

Prosecutor Nisman Suicide?

The temperature of the October Argentine presidential elections just rose quite a few notches in this summertime heat in Buenos Aires. Alberto Nisman was the prosecutor for one of the largest murders in Argentina in the last two decades, when a small Renalt van crashed into the Mutual Israelite Association of Argentina (AMIA in Spanish) in 1994 with 275 kilos of explosives destroying the building and killing 85 victims and one suicide attacker and injuring more than 300 people inside. This attack may have been anti-semitic in nature and most probably anti-Israeli (as the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was also attacked). Only a decade back, Nisman (also Jewish) was said to be on good terms with the presidential couple: former president Nestor Kirchner (RIP) and his widow, current president, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner. This relationship has since soured with the prosecutor Nisman accusing Christina Fernandez de Kirchner's government of whitewashing -- via what Nisman described as an "accord for the impunity” -- of certain persons accused of the AMIA attack, some of whom are now members of the Iranian government.